Bugger off Bush

 

From Mark Stey's column: Bush re-enters the room.

The official observances for the twentieth anniversary managed to be even more wretched and grotesque than I'd expected - the most obvious affront being Bush's equivalence between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the "perpetrators" of 1/6: They were both "children of the same foul spirit", he declared, diminishing the three thousand victims of the former by comparing them to a congressman who had to hide in the stationery cupboard because some goofball was taking selfies with his feet up on the desk.

Twenty years ago, the forty-third president's entire executive branch totally failed the nation. Sample quote from page 184 of America Alone:

FAA Command Center: "Do we want to think about scrambling aircraft?"

FAA Headquarters: "God, I don't know."

FAA Command Center: "That's a decision somebody's going to have to make, probably in the next ten minutes."

FAA Headquarters: "You know, everybody just left the room."

"Everybody just left the room": Your federal government in action. Under Bush, no one paid a price for it: That's your "foul spirit" right there, Pericles. It will be the same when the Chinese yank the rug out from under the dollar: Everybody just left the room - at the White House, at the Fed, at the Treasury ...but not at the IRS, where they're still hard at it freezing the savings accounts of January insurrectionists' nine-year-old grandkids.

Six months to the day after 9/11, Dubya's Immigration and Naturalization Service (as it then was) mailed out two student visas to Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi at their Florida flight school. Unfortunately, Messrs Atta and Shehhi were unable to avail themselves of their new American visas as they had neglected to have their mail forwarded to their new address at Big Smoking Hole in the Ground, Lower Manhattan.

So the forty-third executive branch, on its new money-no-object war footing, is handing out visas to deceased terrorists whose pictures have been on the front pages of American newspapers? No way was Bush putting up with that! He acted decisively - and moved Janis Sposato "sideways" to the post of "Assistant Deputy Executive Associate Commissioner for Immigration Services", where she needed a much longer business card that stuck out awkwardly from her breast pocket, which is kind of embarrassing at cocktail parties.

America is a land that rewards failure (see Thoroughly Modern Milley's chest), which is why it lost the war. On 9/11 Bush had left the room to read My Pet Goat to grade-schoolers, after which he spent the day being flown to one "secure location" and then leaving the room to fly to another (presumably even more) "secure location". On Saturday, he was speaking in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where twenty years ago, after "everybody left the room", the ad-hoc militia of the fourth plane provided the only good news of that grim Tuesday: If the twin towers were Pearl Harbor, Flight 93 was the Doolittle Raid, and on the very same day.

Bush owed a debt to these men for acting while he was invisible. Yet his brief remarks barely mentioned those heroes, and none by name. Instead, he retreated to the lame tropes of the ruling class, and started yakking on about "nativism" and "religious bigotry" (ours, not the hijackers') in contrast to those admirable Americans who "reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees". These are surely pitiful consolations for the Afghan debacle, and weirdly irrelevant to the heroes of Flight 93, who were rather deplorably unicultural - "white male frat jock yuppies". As for "welcoming immigrants", one might think that, even for as oblivious a ruling-class man as Bush, that would be in somewhat bad taste given what happened twenty years ago. From page 249 of After America:

In the 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia... four young men obtained the picture ID with which they boarded their flight on September 11th.

They did so by bribing a Salvadorean illegal immigrant to certify that they all lived at his address. Hundreds lived in his modest flat: it's part of the non-gaming of the non-system that is not only tolerated but venerated by the Uniparty.

Among the beneficiaries of the 7-Eleven ID scam was Ziad Jarrah, who led the team that stormed the cockpit of Flight 93 and who took the pilot's seat.

Which is why Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett and thirty-six other passengers and crew are dead.

Read the whole thing. 

George W Bush is so attentive to his own security that, ahead of his state visit to the UK, he demanded the Queen replace every window at Windsor Castle. (Her Majesty told him to bugger off, as well she should.) 

What we have learned twenty years after 9/11

 

FROM A FRIEND:

Some days back a friend asked me what we have learned twenty years after 9/11. I sent these answers:

1) That our enemies have taken our measure, and we never took theirs. Bin Laden’s strategic predictions vis a vis Afghanistan and the United States have been vindicated: 9/11 was for the other side a massive, generational strategic success.

2) That the entire American governing apparatus is incapable of real strategic thought.

3) That the federal government of the United States is much more inventive, determined, and relentless in curbing its own citizenry than it is in curbing those who would slaughter that citizenry.

4) That the federal government of the United States will allow foreign-power interests — specifically Saudi and Pakistani — to override and eclipse the just interests of the American citizenry.

5) The preceding item exists, of course, because we are ruled by an elite with much stronger social ties to other elites than to the people of our republic.

6) That our generational response to 9/11 guarantees that 9/11 will happen again and again.

This twentieth anniversary is even more depressing and cruel than they usually are. We didn’t suffer as a lot of Americans did that day — my wife made it out of Lower Manhattan alive, for one thing — but because we are Americans, we suffered. Our leadership class was utterly incompetent to the moment, and remained so for the succeeding generation. Today we have inflicted upon us the twin bookends of blundering who mark the two-decade span. In Pennsylvania, President George W. Bush speaks: the man who cared more for Saudis than Americans while the fires still burned, who abandoned the hunt for the immediate perpetrator mere weeks after the massacre, and who cynically leveraged the moment to pursue his own disastrous projects. In Manhattan, President Joe Biden speaks: the lone figure of significance who opposed the raid to get Osama Bin Laden, and the man who presided over the shameful humiliation of defeat in Afghanistan.

A healthy and virtuous republican citizenry would shun them, and erase their names from the record.

Some questions arise. Now that we’ve decided it’s fine for Al Qaeda and the Taliban to have a country of their own again, can we at least abolish the TSA? Now that we’ve given Al Qaeda and the Taliban a stupendous cache of arms and ammunition, can we eliminate all federal gun-control law? Now that we’ve decided we have a community of interest with the Taliban — including its Al Qaeda elements — can we release everyone jailed on account of January 6th?

Hey, just asking. It hardly seems unreasonable for Americans to ask Washington, D.C., for treatment as generous as Washington, D.C., accords the terrorist movements who slaughtered thousands of us in our own streets.

Eric Paliwoda is dead, and for what.
Kim Hampton is dead, and for what.
Classmates are maimed, and for what.
Friends are wracked with PTSD, and for what.

What did we learn?

Twenty years later, we learn that the enemy won — and our ruling class was on their side.

Mark Steyn: The Years We Wasted

 

For most of the last two decades we have observed the anniversary of 9/11 by re-posting my columns from the first few days of the new era. We ceased to do so after September 11th 2017 when "a president who, on the campaign trail, mocked his predecessor's inability to use the words 'radical Islam' himself eschewed all mention of the I-word" - and a defense secretary laughably hyped as Mad Dog Mattis turned out to be just another dribbler from the Washington Generals and retreated to the madrassah wing of the Pentagon to explain that it was all just a theological misunderstanding.

We shall not resume our anniversary observances today. The war is lost, at home and abroad. On the domestic front, we doubled the rate of Muslim immigration to the west and began assimilating ourselves with Islam's strictures on freedom of expression and the like. The decade-and-a-half since the Danish Mohammed cartoons has been one long remorseless surrender on core western liberties. When a school teacher gets beheaded in the street, there is no outrage at the act, just a mild regret that he should have been foolish enough to provoke his own fate. Even the milder jests from the immediate post-9/11 era - the cartoon of the woman trying on new burqas in the changing room and wondering, "Does my bomb look big in this?" - would not be published today:

In the broader society, our rulers quickly determined that it was easier to punish us than our enemies. The post-9/11 security state surely helped soften up western populations for the Chi-Com-19 lockdowns, in which entire nations have been reduced to TSA-administered airports.

As for the war overseas, it ended with a military that can do everything except win handing the keys to Afghanistan back to the guys who pulled off 9/11 - and apologizing for the two-decade inconvenience by gifting the mullahs with some of the most expensive infrastructure on the planet plus an air force, approximately five assault rifles for every Taliban fighter, and express check-in for the forty-seven per cent of the Afghan population that apparently served as US translators.

The position of the United States is far weaker than it was twenty years ago. Around the planet, the assumption of friends and enemies alike is that the American moment is over and the future belongs elsewhere. They are making their dispositions accordingly. It is not a question of wishing "the post-American world", but of accepting the known facts.

From time to time I still try to imagine what it must have been like on those planes. Twenty years ago I singled out three names from the flight manifest:

Peter Hanson, Massachusetts

Susan Hanson, Massachusetts

Christine Hanson, 2, Massachusetts

I used to think of the young parents, struggling to comfort the little girl sitting between them even as they confront the reality of their own fate. Mr Hanson was able to telephone his father in Connecticut and tell him that a hijacking was underway and that a stewardess had been stabbed. I wondered about the moment when everyone - the Hansons, the flight attendants, the passengers - realized that the antiquated 1970s hijack procedures did not apply, that these men did not want to negotiate anything (the release of political prisoners, safe passage to Cuba) but wished only to destroy them.

Did those of us not on the planes ever learn that distinction? On the evidence of how the Taliban played the US "negotiators" in Doha, no.

There are honorable ways to lose a war. This was not one of them. We have dishonored the dead of 9/11 and insulted their sacrifice.

The Wind in the Heights by VANDERLEUN on SEPTEMBER 12, 2020

 Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I.

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

— Christina Rossetti

10,000 FEARED DEAD

— Headline, New York Post, September 12, 2001

AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY I lived in Brooklyn Heights in, of course, Brooklyn. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24 of 1883 transformed the high bluff just to the south of the bridge into America’s first suburb. It became possible for affluent businessmen from the tip of Manhattan which lay just over the East River to commute across the bridge easily and build their stately mansions and townhouses high above the slapdash docks below. Growth and change would wash around the Heights in the 117 years that followed, but secure on their bluff, on their high ground, the Heights would remain a repository old and new money, power, and some of the finest examples of 19th and early 20th-century homes found in New York City.

When I moved to Brooklyn Heights from the suburbs of Westport, Connecticut in the late 90s, it was a revelation to me that such a neighborhood still existed. Small side streets and cul-de-sacs were shaded over by large oaks and maple that made it cool even in the summer doldrums. Street names such as Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple let you know you were off the grid of numbered streets and avenues. Families were everywhere and the streets on evenings and on weekends were full of the one thing you rarely see in Manhattan, children.

Vander Leun gives homage to the dead of 9/11: "The Wind in the Heights"

It's moving and beautiful.  Excerpt.  Read the whole thing.

 The wind came when the pillar of fire became, in what seemed a moment outside of time, a pillar of smoke. We had been standing on the Promenade that morning in our thousands watching death rage at the center of a beautiful September morning. It was a morning with a clear and washed blue sky; the kind of rare New York morning when you can believe, again, that anything is possible in that city of dreams that so often dissolve into disappointment.

Anything, of course, except the two towers whose peaks were engulfed in flames.

Anything, it would seem, but what we were seeing.

And it was a morning, as I recall, that had no wind at all. That was why the flames and the smoke from the flames went almost straight up into the sky, a long sooted streak that bisected one side of the blue sky from the other....

The wind pummeled my back for the five minutes it took me to make my way to my apartment, get inside and shut the windows. I stood there at the windows and watched the others rush by, blurs in the smoke, and noticed when, as suddenly as it had come up, the wind died away and the air was almost still. The smoke and the ash still moved in the street outside and high overhead. The day was still darkened but the initial violence of the blast and the wind had passed.

In time, everyone had passed by as well and the street was empty except for the settling smoke. I looked outside the window where a Japanese maple grew and noticed that its wine-dark leaves were covered with small yellow flecks. I looked down at the sill outside the windows and saw the yellow flecks there as well.

At some point in the next few minutes it dawned on me that there would be few bodies found in the incinerating rubble across the river. I knew then — as certainly as I have even known anything — that all those who had still been in the towers had now gone into the flame and the smoke and that, in some way, the gleaming bits of yellow ash were their tokens, were what they had become in that plunging crematorium.

Jersey City 9/11 Celebration Report

Remember when the lying press told us that there was never any demonstration after Trump said it happened?

Jersey City Muslims Celebrated the Destruction of 9/11.

Trump was right!

What Liberals, Leftist and Osama bin Laden have in common

We note that nutcases on the Left are accusing Republicans sound just like ISIS leaders because ISIS leaders and Republican agree on the nature of radical Islam.

He notes that al-Baghdadi has said that he is waging a war of Muslims against non-Muslims, just as the Republicans have said that al-Baghdadi is waging a war of Muslims against non-Muslims. As if that weren’t damning enough, Saletan also notes that al-Baghdadi has said that his version is Islam is incompatible with western values, and that there are verses in the Koran and Hadith that urge violent jihad against non-Muslims, and sure enough many of those Republicans agree.

 In other words, Republicans are taking ISIS at its word, which makes them just alike.

Now it appears the bin Laden agreed with many of the writers on the Left, having some of the more unhinged in his library.

We’re the snoopy sorts who will always seize the opportunity of a party to look over the nearest bookshelf, assuming there is one, and glean whatever insights it offers into the host’s mind. The fine folks at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence apparently share the same fascination with other people’s reading habits, and have helpfully compiled a list of the books that our brave fighting men seized during their raid on the home of the late Osama bin-Laden.

It’s a fascinating collection, although much of it is surprisingly familiar to anyone who has lately been invited to the home of an up-to-date American liberal. The list includes “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” and “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance” by Noam Chomsky, the esteemed linguist and far-left political analyst, “The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy” by far-left journalist Greg Palast, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” and “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” by far-left historian William Blum, as well as several other similarly fashionable far-left titles. We couldn’t find Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” or anything by Maya Angelou or the “magical realists” of South America on the list, but otherwise bin-Laden seemed to share the same literary tastes as President Barack Obama or any other impeccable liberal. We’ve long marveled at the way pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, anti-God leftists have found so much common ground with Islamists who execute homosexuals and subjugate women in an attempt to impose totalitarian theocratic control, but their overlapping reading lists suggest they at least share the same dissatisfaction with western civilization.

Based on bin-laden’s reading list we can attribute the 9/11 attack on Leftist American writers? After all, who would not want to destroy the World Trade Center and everyone in it if your reality is the world created by the Left? We can be grateful that these people are not more widely read or we would have had more terrorist attacks.

What the Islamic 9/11 Hijackers Told the Passengers on the Doomed Flights.

Were the Saudis Involved with 9/11?

There have been reports that Saudis were hustled out of the country following the attacks on 9/11/2001.  I have been dismissive of these reports because they were denied by the US government and because I believed that the Bush administration would not have been involved in nefarious activities surrounding the terrorist attack.

That may be an error on my part.

The NY Post article Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup...

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast: ...

Read the whole thing.

There's also the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens, but said Wednesday that the oil-rich kingdom bears no responsibility for their actions.

The Saudis are also the sponsors and financial backers of numerous mosques being built around the country aligned with the Wahabi sect of Islam, the most ideologically oriented toward a hatred of the West. According to this article from the Islamist DAWN

It is not merely the faith or oil that flows out of Saudi Arabia. The oil-rich Arab state and its neighbours are busy financing Wahabi and Salafi militants across the globe.

A recent report by the European Parliament reveals how Wahabi and Salafi groups based out of the Middle East are involved in the "support and supply of arms to rebel groups around the world." The report, released in June 2013, was commissioned by European Parliament's Directorate General for External Policies. The report warns about the Wahabi/Salafi organisations and claims that "no country in the Muslim world is safe from their operations ... as they always aim to terrorise their opponents and arouse the admiration of their supporters."

What's in it for the Saudis to sponsor terrorism and to aid terrorists to attack America?  That's a very good question and I believe it requires a theological rather than a secular explanation.   Of course, it's also possible that there is an innocent explanation for much of this and these accusations are a way of destroying relations between our countries.  But it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Ted Cruz on Benghazi: "Truth is not partisan"

Why might Boxer object to an investigation that might damage Hillary Clinton in the long run up to the 2016 election?

Video of 9/11 Attack on the World Trade Center. Never Forget.

The Attack


People jumping.



The collapse.

CULTURAL DEGENERATION

Glenn Reynolds comments on the desire for the curator of the 9/11 Memorial Museum — because it was “rah-rah” American, according to a new book says.

It’s a problem when the people who are supposed to be the curators of your culture fundamentally don’t like it.

Too "rah-rah" American?

It IS a problem, and it's increasingly robbing Americans of their country when academia, the arts, museums and other collectors of cultural artifacts essentially agree with Jeremiah Wright that on 9/11 "America's chickens came home to roost."

Boston Bomber 9/11 Truther and Obama Supporter

He was apparently a 9/11 Truther, posting a tweet on Sept. 1 that read in part, “Idk why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job.” On Election Day he retweeted a tweet from Barack Obama that read: “This happened because of you. Thank you.”

 

Well you didn't think he voted for Mitt Romney did you?

Other tweets: 

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sent pro-Obama tweets out on Election Night, retweeting one that said "Barack you my dawg" and hailing how “america is impervious to the f--kery #justforthisoneday.”

Althouse Channels Obama on Benghazi

Here's what I've been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance. But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours. The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support. It was always too late to help. It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours.... When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?

Sounds reasonable.

'Benghazi: The Definitive Report'

According to Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL, and Jack Murphy, a former Green Beret David Petraeus was brought down by an internal CIA coup. In addition,

• Obama security adviser John Brennan was running a secret war for Obama "off the books."
• This led to the Benghazi attack which was a retaliation for secret raids authorized by Obama security adviser John Brennan.
• Elite counter-terrorist operators from America’s Delta Force were deployed to Libya as 'analysts,' which allowed President Obama to declare that America did not have any boots on the ground but was simply providing air support for the rebels. The reality was that Delta Force had a small contingent instructing the rebels in the finer points of weapons and tactics.
  

  Webb and Murphy said they wrote the book to reveal 'the truth' behind the attack. They say news accounts of the incident have often been inaccurate because journalists have not had inside access to the people who were on the ground at the time.  The authors have been frustrated, they say, by politicians who have attempted to twist the facts of the case to suit their own ends. Conservatives sought to use the attack as an election issue and place the blame on Obama. Democrats and the Obama administration have worked to deflect responsibility and downplay the warning signs that were present before the consulate was raided.

The Choom Gang's Syrian Strategy

Richard Fernandez summarizes it

in Syria people are dying by the thousand, the Jihadis are getting the upper hand, its threatening to spread across borders. Our plan A isn’t working.

Well what’s Plan B?

From the perspective of this observer, the Team Obama choom gang wants the Syrian rebels to win and then turn into Liberal Democrats. Riiiight! Just like the Egyptian people were going to elect a moderate non-sectarian government with limited powers determined to separate mosque and state.

Or our famous intervention in Libya which resulted on a failed state in which four of our people were just murdered. And speaking of Libya

Speaking of guns, events surrounding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi have never been fully explained, giving rise to reports, such as this one, quoting an “intelligence insider” as saying the administration has been running guns without the appearance of running them:

The entire arms and weapons running operation was headquartered in Benghazi, The weapons were actually being shipped out of Libya from the port city of Dernah, located about a hundred miles east of Benghazi. That was the ‘choke point’ of the weapons being shipped out. Remember the Lusitania? Think in those terms, ships carrying weapons hid among ‘humanitarian aid.’ By the time of the attacks, an estimated 30-40 million pounds of arms were already transported out of Libya.

From there, the weapons were being sent to staging areas in Turkey near the Syrian border, for use by the Free Syrian Army and other ragtag terrorist groups to fight against Assad. The objective was and still is to destabilize the Assad government.

You may say “that’s a likely story”. Who would believe it? But the “intelligence insider’s” story is about as likely as the administration’s tale that the attack was about a YouTube video. Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East continues full speed ahead into the dark.

What really triggered the FBI investigation?

Was an FBI agent obsessed with another woman?

However, supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter, and prohibited him from any role in the investigation, according to the officials.

The FBI officials found that he had sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley, according to the people familiar with the probe.

At this point I don't know of anyone who looks good in this affair, but it's becoming clear that this story has more threads than a ball of twine.  Illicit sex meets Benghazi, secret prisons, dead CIA agents, Jihadis, obsessed shirtless FBI agents and a White House that claims to knows nothing.

The New York Daily News spoke with Broadwell's father, Paul Krantz, who told the paper: “This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out."

“There is a lot more that is going to come out,” said Krantz, claiming he was not allowed to elaborate. “You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye."

I'm beginning to be afraid that we won't know the truth because the media has become the Obama palace guard.  Can you imagine anyone at MSNBC or in the NY Times willing to investigate if the story leads to what Obama knew and when he knew it? 

There is a story on Spain in the Wall Street Journal, mostly about unemployment, but it includes this sentence that is beginning to apply to the US:

If they haven't already lost confidence in the government, many Spanish citizens are in the process of doing so.

The Left has been anti-US for a long, long time while the Right has been working tirelessly to shore up the structure of society including clean government and respect for the military and law enforcement.  We may have reached a tipping point where the Right no longer supports the structure that has been occupied by the Left.

In Spain, where unemployment is 25% according to government statistics, people don't show up for job interviews or refuse a job when offered.

Spain's 'lost' generation isn't really lost. They just prefer tweeting to working.

In the US you can get food stamps, public housing, welfare, 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and an ObamaPhone.   Would you rather tweet than work?

The Petraeus Resignation - What It Means (and Ken Starr)

Jim Treacher has a post on this:  Petraeus resigns, and it definitely has nothing to do with Benghazi and of course it has everything to do with Benghazi. He was scheduled to testify before congress about Benghazi.

Guess Petraeus didn’t have any sealed divorce records for Obama to wave around. But this’ll do in a pinch. The important thing is to remove the obstacle.

Not only doesn’t it matter that everybody can see what Obama is doing, it’s actually better for him that way. What good is abusing your power if you can’t laugh at your enemy’s futility

Glenn Reynolds I would say “heh,” but it’s not exactly funny.

 

I commented on the strange actions of Petraeus last month It's Time for Petraeus to Testify. The information the FBI gathered on him may have been used by Obama to blackmail Petraeus into backing the lie that Benghazi was a movie-inspired demonstration that got out of hand.

So was Petraeus told to resign, as many most have suggested, or did he do so voluntarily?  Does the Obama administration strike anyone as particularly prudish?  With congressional testimony coming up, Petraeus' position became untenable and he could either resign or commit perjury. So he resigned.  If his resignation was voluntary, it actually raises my opinion of him as a flawed but honorable man.  If his resignation was forced, the timing was convenient for Obama.  And why is the FBI leaking a torrent of information about Petraeus designed to make him out to be a love-struck teen, or a Bill Clinton clone?  I mean, come on, who has the time to send an ex-lover "thousands of e-mails in the last several months."   Who does he think he is, Glenn Reynolds?

 

But resignation does not get him off the hook.  He can still be forced to testify.  If he appears before the House Intelligence committee as a private citizen he will undoubtedly "lawyer up" and then it's doubtful if we will get any useful information from him.

 

Does this help or hinder the Obama/Media-Mob in the Benghazi cover-up?  Some of it depends on the willingness of whistle-blowers in the military, CIA and the State Department to leak to the House Intelligence committee.   A lot depends on the willingness of the Republicans in the House to pursue this issue now that the election is over and Obama is in power another four years.  You can be sure that if they proceed with an investigation, they will be vilified and smeared.  Who wants to be the next Ken Starr? 

A CBS News Obama-Libya scandal? Certainly.

In a passionate post today, Bret Baier of Fox News hammers CBS News for waiting till Nov. 4 to post a bit of video quite relevant to all of this. In it, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” asks the president about Benghazi. The question was posed on Sept. 12, the same day of the Rose Garden address:

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?
OBAMA: Well it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

The president’s response packs it all: 1) Avoidance of the question; 2) refusal to use the term “terrorism”; 3) reliance on talking points about bringing people to justice. In other words, big news.

Had this clip embedded itself in the news cycle after the town-hall debate, the following would have happened:

1) CBS News would have reaped millions of page views;

2) Mitt Romney’s slip-up in the town-hall debate over this issue would no longer look like as a slip-up; it’d look like a quest for accountability;

3) Team Obama would have had to spend days responding to questions about the discrepancy between what he said in the town-hall debate and what he’d told Kroft; and

4) After that town-hall debate, Romney pretty much dropped Libya as a talking point. In a strategic move much observed by pundits, he declined to pound away on the topic in the final presidential debate, which centered on foreign policy. Had CBS News released what it had on hand, perhaps Romney would have had charged ahead with a Libya message.